Normandy, France

Château de Saint Paterne

Price per night from$194.49

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR183.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Fine food, fresh heir

Setting

Cusp of the Loire

Château de Saint Paterne is a luxe and lived-in family castle in the gastronomic greenlands on the Normandy border. Charles-Henry de Valbray and his wife, Ségolène, are your hosts (Charles-Henry is a self-taught chef, and doesn’t disappoint) at this boho-chic château, which charms guests with its fairytale looks, original stone walls and cosily classic interiors. The outdoor pool comes into its own in the summer, and there’s history, too: in the 16th century, King Henri IV of France overnighted here.

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A bottle of pommeau – a Norman apple liqueur

Facilities

Photos Château de Saint Paterne facilities

Need to know

Rooms

11, including six suites.

Check–Out

Noon, but flexible according to availability. Earliest check-in, 2.30pm.

More details

Rates exclude breakfast (€15 a person).

Also

In-room massages can be arranged on request, and there are bicycles to borrow.

Hotel closed

From roughly December to March every year.

At the hotel

Tennis courts, gardens with playground and trampoline, CD, DVD and book libraries, in-room massage, free WiFi throughout. In rooms: flatscreen TV, DVD/CD, iPod dock, Casanera products.

Our favourite rooms

L’Orangerie is set apart from the château, a huge, self-contained suite with an open bathroom, vast wooden bed and one wall made from a 19th-century backdrop found in a Barcelona theatre. The château’s most modern room is the Chambre des Mystères, romantically secluded up two narrow flights of winding stairs. It’s chocolate-coloured, with bold red accents. For a stay that’s steeped in history, go for the Chambre d’Henri IV, where France’s first Bourbon king kipped.

Poolside

There's a heated outdoor pool in the grounds, open May to September.

Packing tips

Riding boots and hats, and a hearty appetite for cider and cheese.

Pet‐friendly

Pets can stay for €10 a night; the owners have dogs of their own and are happy to make meal arrangements for yours too. See more pet-friendly hotels in Normandy.

Children

Welcome, but it's better suited to adults and teenagers so may be best to leave the littler Smiths behind. Extra beds can be added to Parc, Canard, Roseraie, L'Orangerie and Datcha rooms for €35 a person, each night.

Overview

Kids of all ages are welcome. There's plenty for them to do in the château's 2.5 acre park with a pool, playground, trampoline and more.

Best for

Over-5s.

Recommended rooms

Clad in 18th-century wood paneling, the Canard suite has an imposing four-poster bed, a roll-top bath and an adjoining room with bunk beds for two children. Smaller double Classic Rooms Marechal and Terrasse can be joined together to sleep up to four .

Activities

The owners’ three little boys have grown up in this family château, so there’s plenty here to keep children of all ages busy. Let yours roam free in the 2.5 acre park, a halo of lush Normandy greenery and manicured lawns surrounding the castle, with a heated outdoor pool, playground, ping-pong, badminton and huge trampoline for active little Smiths. A tennis court lies in quiet seclusion an 150-metre stroll away from the main house. If relaxation is more your thing try your hand at croquet, or simply flop with a good book in the dappled shade of an old tree.

Swimming pool

Sitting by a paved terrace, the heated pool in the grounds is open from May to September. It’s not supervised, but the sunloungers set out on the surrounding grass are great for keeping an eye on little ones, who can pick from the hotel’s floats.

Meals

Children gather for dinner at 6.30pm to enjoy a special menu together. French kids’ staples of steak haché, ham or pasta are served in the dining room (highchairs are available); parents are then free to enjoy a peaceful dinner once everyone’s tucked up in bed. The hotel can heat up milk or prepare purées – just ask.

Babysitting

The hotel has local babysitters on hand to step in when required (€9 an hour). Book a day in advance.

Also

Extra beds can be added to every room except Classic Rooms for €30 a person, each night. Cots are free. Please note that, in accordance with French law, children in pools must be supervised at all times.

Food and Drink

Photos Château de Saint Paterne food and drink

Top Table

Take your pick from the drawing room or dining room, out on the terrace if the sun is shining, or in the Moroccan-inspired games room, which can be decorated romantically if you’re planning to propose.

Dress Code

Bohemian and chic, to match owners Ségolène and Charles-Henry.

Hotel restaurant

Owner Charles-Henry de Valbray is a self-taught chef who prepares a terrific set dinner, served around 8pm each evening. Typical dishes include beetroot and caper gazpacho with cucumber sorbet, veal tagine with dried fruits, and apricot puffs with rosemary ice-cream.

Hotel bar

There’s an honesty bar in the salon, a grand space in which to nurse a nightcap and pretend you own the château, to the sounds of jazz, lounge and classical.

Last orders

Breakfast is available from 8.30am until 11am. Dinner is served at 8pm.

Room service

None, though breakfast can be served in-room.

Location

Photos Château de Saint Paterne location
Address
Château de Saint Paterne
4, rue de la Gaieté
Saint-Paterne, Alencon
72610
France

Nestled between Normandy and the Pays de la Loire, Château de Saint Paterne is in the outskirts of the historic town of Alençon.

Planes

Easyjet (www.easyjet.co.uk) flies from London to Tours, an hour’s drive away. You can also fly to Paris, which is a two-hour drive from the hotel.

Trains

Alençon station is a five-minute drive from Château de Saint Paterne. The station serves Paris via Le Mans

Automobiles

From Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, take the A1 towards Paris, then follow the 'Paris Ouest' signs to Porte de la Chapelle. Once you're on the 'périphérique ouest', head for the A11 to Chartres. Go towards Le Mans, then change on to the A28 towards Rouen Alençon. Take exit 19 to south Alençon, and follow the signs for the centre of Saint Paterne. The hotel will be immediately to your right. The drive takes two hours and 30 minutes. From Tours, the A28 goes directly to Alençon (about an hour and a half). Hire a car at either of the airports, or at the Eurostar terminal at Gare du Nord.

Other

There’s space for three helicopters to land (during the day only) at the château; let the hotel know two days before your arrival so they can make arrangements.

Worth getting out of bed for

Green fields, apple orchards, mottled horses and endless supplies of Camembert… Château de Saint Paterne sits near the border between Normandy and the Pays de la Loire, a stone's throw from the lively town of Alençon. The hotel has nooks and crannies to explore, a grand living room and pretty little garden to read or reflect (or meet for a pre-dinner apéritif) in and 10 hectares of parkland beyond. Take a swim in the outdoor pool, or stay awhile in the Jacuzzi, followed by a spell in the sauna. Pass the time with games of badminton, biking through the grounds and bouncing on the trampoline (yes, really), or borrow a deck of cards and some board gamesmassages can be arranged on request, too. 

In town you’ll find flea markets, attractive cobbled streets, mediaeval quarters and a flamboyant Gothic basilica as exquisite as the precious lace they’ve been making here since the 17th century. But it’s the glorious countryside – all heavy blossoms, verdant rolling hills and placid waters – that seduces. A 20-minute drive from Saint Paterne, the Ecurie des As-Taquins riding school on the Rue de Bretagne in Alençon offers lessons for beginners to pros, and there's golf, kayaking, zip-lining and light-aircraft flying for the intrepid, too.

Local restaurants

The château’s owners have a gastronomic side project: Rive Droite, a collection of dining rooms set in the town’s 18th-century former lace museum on Rue du Pont Neuf in Alençon, where you can enjoy seasonal food either indoors or on a pretty riverside terrace. Saint-Céneri le Gérei is often voted as one of France’s most beautiful villages, and its other boast is painters’ school turned rustic bistro L’Auberge des Peintres (+33 (0)2 33 26 49 18), where dishes such as seafood cassoulet and a very good black pudding exemplify simple French food done well. In La Perrière, La Maison d’Horbée on the Grande Place is a tearoom, gallery and antique shop in one, for browsing brocante with your coffee and brioche. In Neufchâtel-en-Saosnois, Le Relais des Etangs de Guibert, overlooking a woodland-fringed lake, serves specialities such as carpaccio of foie gras and lobster.

Reviews

Photos Château de Saint Paterne reviews
Victoria Moore

Anonymous review

By Victoria Moore, Resident oenophile

Outside it’s raining hard, and all we can see of northern France are autoroute reflectors glowing green under the glare of our headlights as we speed towards Le Mans. We’re tired, crotchety, cursing this country’s passion for rail strikes, and fantasising wildly about the bread, cheese and carafe of wine we’ve been promised on arrival. I’m confident it won’t consist of a plastic-wrapped slice of supermarket cheddar. ‘Do you think there’ll be Pont L’Eveque?’ I ask Mr Smith. ‘And gooey Camembert?’ he counters. ‘And something radioactively whiffy, with proper French bread to squash it on...’

By the time we reach the village of Saint-Paterne in the Perche region, we’re almost delirious with hunger. We pass the church and peer into inky blackness through sprays of water to make out the bulk of a small turreted cha?teau dating back to the 15th century, and take a sharp right turn into its rewardingly crunchy gravel driveway.

It’s 10.30pm and we haven’t so much as packed up the SatNav when the front door swings open and proprietor Ségolène de Valbray appears to greet us. She shows us into a series of communal salons furnished with parquet floors, faded rugs and antiques, promising us not just cheese, but a tray in our room with a plate of something warm. ‘We haven’t really put away dinner yet,’ she says.

This is the beauty of Château de Saint Paterne. There are 10 rooms and suites, each spacious and with its own distinctive character. Yet, though guests’ privacy is never compromised, this maison d’hôte retains the sense of being a grand family home (which it is: the de Valbrays have lived here for centuries) to which you’re invited for a long weekend of sumptuous meals and good hosting.

A reassuring smell of wood smoke emanates from the open fire in the drawing-room grate, and we’re tempted to curl up in a salon – perhaps the one with velvety, wine-coloured walls, comfortable armchairs and bold display of tall church candles. But Ségolène is already throwing open a back door and marching us outside, over more gravel, past a wet lawn, towards a high-ceilinged garden building whose high windows are illuminated by the warm light glowing inside.

This is the Orangerie, an airy space that must be suffused with sunshine in summer yet is still, at the less sympathetic end of October, surprisingly cosy. It feels like an extension of the outdoors: a painted garden picture hangs like wallpaper along one entire, long wall; the enormous bed is built out of great big hunks and chunks of naked wood; and the semi-open-plan bathroom is painted a sprightly lime green. Even the chandelier seems to be made of branches. My ragged senses are still being soothed by decadent details – a pair of champagne flutes beside the bath, the oversized sink piled with L’Occitane toiletries, terracotta tiles with underfloor heating – when there’s a knock at the door.

The tray – no, two trays – arrive, crammed with dishes. This is a four-course feast, not a supper. We feel regally pampered. Spiced mussel soup might not have been my first choice so late (it’s now 11pm) but it’s so good I finish it. Next comes a meltingly tender lamb tagine studded with medjool dates, made by the Moroccan housekeeper. I’m too tired to tackle the plump, glistening strawberry tart, or make a hole in the cheese, which comes on a plate of dressed lettuce leaves – and I start to wonder how much this might all be costing. (€30 each, it turns out, which is extraordinary considering the quality.) No fan of clever-clever foams wrung out of a daringly unappetising set of ingredients, or over-worked edible sculptures on ridiculously shaped plates, I’m relieved to find the food at Château de Saint Paterne is pitched at the level of home cooking, if you could actually cook that well.

As we discover the following night, the way dinner usually goes is that guests gather for a convivial fireside aperitif at 8pm (in my case, an unholily strong G&T). Then, at about 8.30pm, everyone moves on to the dining room to eat a set menu by candelight at their own tables. In the kitchen in his pinny most evenings is Charles-Henry de Valbray himself. Where did he learn such skills, I ask, sighing over a beautifully light asparagus mousseline, and magret de canard cooked with honey and crispy little potatoes. Charles-Henry shrugs. ‘Just at home, in the family kitchen.’

The wine list is short, just a handful of reds and whites. Like the British aristocracy, it takes refuge in well-bred clarets. It’d be nice to see a few more exciting bottles, though what’s here is good. I love that it’s sold by the bottle, but when we ask for a glass of Pouilly-Fumé each, Ségolène says that’s fine – she will drink the rest herself.

Much of our time is spent dreaming of whiling away a few days here in warmer weather; the outdoor pool is open until the end of September, and we’d have the run of the 25-acre grounds. The lawn is dotted with chairs and tables begging for you to sit with a book, sipping a local drop. As for its Smith credentials, there’s a fairy-tale quality, and it’s romantic, too. King Henry IV apparently stole away here for trysts with his lovers. More prosaically, the motoring museum at nearby Le Mans is said to be excellent. I am drawn to the glittering Loire, about an hour and a half’s drive away, where there are wine producers galore, so you can drop in for a tasting without making an appointment.

Our greatest temptation? To keep coming back, staying in a different room each time: we love Chambre Henri IV, whose antique wardrobe is carved with faces that Charles-Henry admits terrified him as a child; and Chambre du Parc with its attic bathroom. A secret door in a room downstairs opens onto a stone spiral staircase that takes you to another suite, the more modern Mystères. Consider them all earmarked.

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Price per night from $191.31